


Fracture Lines

by torrential



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Multiple Personalities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6611269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrential/pseuds/torrential
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When Matt starts waking up in the mornings covered in bruises, he starts to wonder if he has been sleepwalking.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>When Matt starts waking up with knife wounds that have been stitched up, he really starts to panic.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>When Matt wakes up and Foggy is there, accusing him of lying and running around the city as a masked vigilante, he thinks Foggy is making it up. He couldn't possibly be doing that... could he?</i>
</p>
<p>Where Matt is still Daredevil, he just doesn't know he is Daredevil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the Daredevil Kink Meme. Another fic that's been in limbo for months, but I needed a break from editing/rewriting chapter 5 of Our Daily Bread, so here we are. ^^;
> 
> What I know about DID comes from the internet and some insight into Internal Family Systems, so this isn't likely to be the most accurate portrayal of the condition ever. ^^; Also, CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNING for this chapter: molestation of a minor. It's only this chapter but still, heed the warning.

There are moments after the accident when the assault on his senses becomes too much and he... goes away for awhile. Never for more than a few minutes, and at first he doesn’t even notice until Dad shakes him out of it one too many times, sounding worried. But he can’t help it -- it’s like the noise crowds him out of his own head, crushes him small and flat until he wants to scream under the pressure. The little jolts in his personal timeline are a relief, one moment overbearing and the next back to normal, back to tolerable. Still, he knows that’s not right, that something’s shaken loose in his head since the accident.

Between the things he can hear now and the lost time, Matt finds himself lying to his dad a lot and he hates it but what else can he do? There’s something wrong with him and he doesn’t want Dad to find out; he worries enough about him as is.

And then Dad is gone and it’s his fault, and still the world around him rages in his senses, won’t let him have a moment’s peace. It gets worse, and worse, and he knows the nuns talk about him, he can _hear_ them, from across the building and up two floors. They don’t know what to do. Nobody knows what to do.

And then there is Father Waring.

He likes Father Waring, all the kids do. He asks how they are doing with the gravity of an adult addressing another, gently teases the younger ones into giggles, always has a companionable pat on the back for Matt. It’s not like how his father would rest a heavy, reassuring hand on his shoulder but it’s similar enough to evoke a muted sort of fondness in Matt, so much that he doesn’t question it when the touches start to linger before slipping away.

And every time Father Waring looks at him, Matt smells something rise from his skin. A bitter-salt smell, rounded around the edges, pungent like sweat but more concentrated. He doesn’t know what it means, and it’s not restricted to him -- it happens around the other kids as well, though it’s strongest with him -- so he puts it out of his mind as another thing he’s discovered that occurs naturally but he didn’t know about before the accident.

Until one day, they’re alone in a room off the nave and Father Waring draws him aside and asks if Matt trusts him, trusts him to take care of him, to be his friend. And Matt says yes, because while the nuns and staff at the orphanage are not a replacement for his dad, they’re kind enough in their absentminded, overworked way, and they look out for him as best as they can. That has to be enough, these days.

 _Good_ , Father Waring says, and that smell is there, that emanation, stronger than ever and accompanied by a strangely excited thumping of his heart. _Good, Matthew. Can I show you something friends do? It’s something special, something secret._

And now Matt is suspicious because as far as he knows, adults aren’t _really_ friends with kids his age, not to the extent of sharing secrets. Even Father Waring, who’s still a priest and an authority figure. _It will feel good, Matthew_ , Father Waring urges. _I promise._

No, Matt says, backing up, no, I want to go. A grip encircles his upper arm and he struggles, feeling the oils from Father Waring’s hand smear across his skin, the microscopic disordering of blood vessels that he’s already learned will result in bruises later. You’re hurting me--

A soothing voice, _It’s okay, Matthew, it’s okay, this isn’t going to hurt, just calm down_ , belied by the increasingly excited pounding of his heart as Matt struggles and tries to squirm away. Father Waring’s free hand picks open the fastening to his pants and now he’s gasping and crying because this is wrong, he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want this.

Hands on him now, skin on him, filthy with that smell, being dragged across his body as Father Waring fondles and plucks and touches all over. The rasp of the hairs on his knuckles, the searing raw wetness as he sucks on his inner thigh, it’s all imprinting onto his body and he’ll never get it out. And it’s too much, it’s too much, he screams -- and then, and then--

He wakes up to Father Waring being led away, bloodied and torn, shrieking something about the Devil.

 

* * *

 

After that, the nuns find Stick.

Stick buys him ice cream and asks him about his senses, but Matt is wary, so wary. The old man’s brusque manner is a refreshing change from the people who tiptoe so sadly around him, but he’s not about to place faith in anything he says just yet. He licks his ice cream sullenly, refusing to acknowledge the components that Stick lays out like a laundry list even though they’re all there on his tongue now that his attention’s been drawn to them.

Gifts, he calls them. Gifts. When it’s because of his senses that Matt wakes up two nights out of three shaking with the memory of Father Waring’s touches searing him as if they’re happening right then and there. They won’t go away, even as the nuns try to tell him that time will help, that they’ll eventually fade. That the stains Father Waring left will disappear.

Their heartbeats tell him they’re afraid that’s not true.

“Smart,” Stick is saying, “is making the right decision at the right time. Like now.” Matt wonders what “right” even means for him anymore as he continues, “What’s it gonna be, Matty? You gonna spend your life crying and rocking yourself to sleep at night?”

“No,” Matt says, even though he’s afraid that’s exactly what he’s headed for. “I’m gonna -- I’m gonna--”

He stops, impotent. There’s a trickle of ice cream creeping down the cone, sliding cool over his hand, but he makes no move to lick it or otherwise clean it off. Stick frowns as the moment stretches on. “You’re gonna what, Matty?”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Matt tells him at last, small and scared. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Then stop wasting my time.”

And then Stick is _looming_ over him -- moved faster than Matt could keep up with -- and now he’s reaching for him, hands greedy and hungry, and he’s going to--

When he comes to, throat raw and hands sore, Stick sounds approving: “There’s some potential in you yet, kid.”

Over the vanilla, Matt can taste blood in the air.

 

* * *

 

After that, Stick comes regularly to take Matt away and “work with him,” as he tells the nuns. But he’s always strangely dismissive of Matt, snorting in disgust while Matt hunkers before him, shoulders drawn up as if he can hide in his own body. “I have no interest in you,” he says once, enigmatic and worrying. “I’m here for the Devil.”

Matt’s always known he has the Devil in him but he didn’t realize Stick knew that as well. Is it that obvious? Did Father Waring brand him in some way he doesn’t know about because he can’t see? He fists his hands and tries not to shrink under the force of his shame, that the Devil’s the only worthwhile thing about Matt now that he’s soiled and disgusting and tainted.

But he goes with Stick. What choice does he have?

He never remembers what he does with him, only the beginnings and the ends framing those unknown blocks of time. The beginnings involve being taken to an underground space, a basement, and coolly, silently assessed until he fidgets under the scrutiny and then the world -- goes away. The ends are waking up to aches and pains and bruises, soreness all over and sweat soaking his clothes. Stick never tells him what happens during that lost time, just deposits him back at St. Agnes with the report that he’s “doing well.”

He’d worry more but for the fact that after every session, he feels _better_. Less scared, less overwhelmed by the world, by his memories. His senses are no longer torture. He can only hear at about what he did before the accident -- maybe a little better, but he’s already been told that’s natural after losing one’s sight, that the other senses kick in to compensate. They are compensating but not to madness, not anymore. It no longer tastes like he has his tongue pressed to pavement or dirty alley walls, or that his standard-issue sheets are sandpaper instead of worn cotton cloth.

Matt doesn’t miss it. He remembers that first outing with Stick, when Stick tried to run him through his paces, but he doesn’t miss it. He just wants to be normal again, as normal as he can be. When he says as much to Stick one day, the old man snorts in ugly laughter. “Sure, Matty,” he tells him with the usual tinge of disgust present like every other time he addresses Matt. “ _You’re_ normal. That’s all you’ll ever be.”

It feels true, but Matt doesn’t need enhanced hearing to know that it’s a lie.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s used to waking up with bumps and bruises. He is not used to waking up with neatly-stitched injuries.

Sitting up in his bed, Matt runs fear-numbed fingers over the neat row of sutures on his side, his arm. This -- this is real. It’s not just a case of sleepwalking; he _actively needed medical attention_ sometime last night and he has no memory of it. Did he go to the hospital? Does Foggy know? He’s listed as his emergency contact -- if Matt needed stitches, surely the hospital would have called him to at least pick up his blind friend.

He doesn’t know. He can’t remember.

He hasn’t blacked out like this since he was a child.

After Stick left, the blackouts stopped. It left just Matt to cope with day to day life. Adjusting to his new normal. Hiding the Devil inside him. His senses returned to ordinary levels and he figured whatever it was in that chemical waste had worn off. He was a regular kid, as normal as his circumstances would allow him to be.

He tried to forget Father Waring but the whispers followed him out of the orphanage, through Holy Cross High School. There’s the poor blind kid who got felt up by a priest. How stupid could he get, how sad. Matt ignored them, made no friends, made valedictorian. The local paper ran a story about the blind orphan boy at the head of his class; Sister Eunice read it proudly to him the night before graduation. Matt smiled, polite, and tried to keep his hands from clenching where they lay in his lap.

At eighteen, he inherited the money Dad put away from him. Graduated from college, made it into Columbia’s law program with flying colors. Met Foggy.

Columbia was like a fresh start. He shed his history like a snake and reinvented himself simply as Matt Murdock, law student -- no longer Matt Murdock, victim, or Matt Murdock, poor little blind boy. Nothing special, just another overworked student ready to weep as finals approached, or going out drinking with his best friend, chasing a dream together. The best damn avocados this city would ever see. Normal, normal. In defiance of Stick and his past.

Normal. Though every so often, a siren pierced his consciousness. His head would jerk around like a dog’s, unerringly tracking the noise whether it was a block away or halfway across Hell’s Kitchen. Foggy laughingly accused him of wanting to be an ambulance chaser and he tried to smile about it but they haunted his nightmares, multiplying and multiplying until his head split from the noise, the pain they represented, those cries of his city.

Then the sleepwalking started, and the sirens went away.

Ever since just after Columbia, after Landman and Zack, he’s been sleepwalking on an almost nightly basis. He knows this; it’s the only logical explanation for why he’d find his belongings moved slightly out of place in the morning, why he’d wake up to injuries he couldn’t remember sustaining. He’d tried sleep clinics, to no avail. There were no disruptions in his sleeping patterns when he was under observation, no bouts of sleepwalking, not even any unusual brain activity. He learned to let it go after awhile, and the injuries he acquired were minor for the most part except for once when he apparently tripped over something and cracked two ribs. How that didn’t wake him up he didn’t know then, but it left him with the experience to recognize the same now.

More pain: he maps out a sore spot on his upper right chest, bruises and scrapes all over. What feels like another cut tugging across his shoulder blade, and a tenderness that promises to be a spectacular abrasion at the corner of his right brow and cheek. Not to mention the general, overall exhaustion. Was this what Dad felt like after going ten rounds in the ring? Matt chokes back a bubble of hysterical laughter at how wildly inapt the comparison is. He’s an _attorney_ , a blind one at that. He has no reason to be getting into fights, shouldn’t have an opportunity to in the first place. He doesn’t even have the clientele or cases which might lead to him earning unwanted interest from people who’d want to do him harm.

So why does it feel like he got worked over in a back alley by a whole football team? Armed with knives?

Matt has no answer by the time he makes it to the office. Karen and Foggy are concerned about his eye, of course, but what can he tell them when he doesn’t know himself? He brushes them off with some sort of excuse, he barely remembers what, and then they’re all distracted by a case walking through their door.

When he falls asleep that night, it’s to the sound of sirens.

A few days later, the police find their client dead.

 

* * *

 

It’s getting worse.

He wakes up with more injuries, cleaned and stitched and bandaged. His knuckles are bruised and raw, his lips split. They crack open afresh as he groans, his body assaulting him with pain upon consciousness. Whatever he’s doing on a nightly basis, he’s earning one hell of a beating for it.

For a moment Matt entertains the thought of having Foggy stay the night so he can stop Matt if he gets up and, say, unconsciously wanders into the middle of a turf war. But he knows, somewhere deep in his gut, that it will be a fruitless endeavor. He’s never sleepwalked while under observation before, he’s sure he’s not going to start now. Which is crazy, because what’s his subconscious up to that it only propels him toward violent nocturnal activities when there are no witnesses?

Actually, put like that, it makes perfect sense.

He still feels like he’s going crazy, attributing action to his subconscious. But he can’t involve Foggy, which leaves him to deal with this alone. And he doesn’t know what to do.

 

* * *

 

On a whim, he leaves a note on the counter for his unknown doctor, asking who they are. The next morning he finds it moved a few inches to the side, as if somebody picked it up and set it back down. There is no reply.

 

* * *

 

The tenement case will be a good distraction. Matt goes to see Brett Mahoney down at the precinct. While he’s waiting for the information he requested, an officer shoots a suspect in the interrogation room. He doesn’t get his information.

 

* * *

 

The morning after Hell’s Kitchen explodes, he wakes up in his apartment to thirteen messages on his phone from Karen and Foggy and then Karen about Foggy. They’re difficult to make out over a strange low-key ringing in his ears, but he hears their increasing worry, then their panic, then Foggy’s plaintive query of where he is. Matt’s grip tightens on the phone, making the plastic casing creak dangerously.

He was in all night. His phone ringing should have woken him up a dozen times over before the battery died. So why...?

(He knows why.)

(The thought is held from his mind.)

It’s a struggle to get out of bed. Matt feels like he’s been beaten all over, rolled around in a barrel full of rocks, and then dumped over Niagara Falls. A hot shower helps but little, but he’s too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice. Something’s obviously happened.

He streams CNN on his laptop as he pulls together a hasty breakfast, then loses his appetite completely as the news anchor details the bombings, the snipings, the man in the mask. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, they’re calling him. How many people did he kill overnight, in fire and steel and darkness?

But the more he listens, the more he realizes that it’s all speculation. There’s not one shred of concrete evidence pinning the Devil to any of his alleged crimes, save for being caught on tape incapacitating a bunch of police. And how would he be holed up with a hostage _and_ have shot those officers from another building entirely?

Matt shakes his head. For the sake of the truth, a thread of order in the chaos, the Devil needs to turn himself in, if only to clear his own name. Refocus the investigation on the real culprits.

For a moment he thinks of his own Devil, but the association fades gently away.

 

* * *

 

His living room is trashed. The door to his bedroom is shattered and off its track. The lowest step leading up to the roof access has been crushed to splinters; for a moment Matt tries to figure out the force and angle required to destroy the wood like that and can’t even begin to comprehend it. His coffee table is in pieces. His corner lamp is destroyed. The smell of stale beer permeates the air.

This is the first time his nightmares have followed him home. Matt stands in the middle of the wreckage that comprises his apartment and tries futilely to not feel small and afraid.

 

* * *

 

Karen and Foggy are investigating Union Allied, Westmeyer-Holt. Karen’s already been attacked doing so. They’re putting themselves in danger and he can’t protect them. Even with setting down ground rules, there’s only so much he can do, and a spark of anger makes his hands clench.

How has his life come to this? Strange injuries. His friends sneaking around behind his back. A possible conspiracy, stretched out across their lives.

If only he could remember. If only he weren’t so angry.

 

* * *

 

_Do you think the Devil exists?_

He can feel the steady regard of his dad’s old priest. Listens to his story of a holy man and the creature that only wore the face of a man who struck him down with such cruelty. _Yes, Matthew_ , Father Lantom says, solemn, _I believe he walks among us, taking many forms._

Matt doesn’t know what he was expecting to hear. What he wanted to hear. He swallows, self-damnation on the tip of his tongue. _Help me_ , he wants to say. _I think I’m going crazy. I think I may be the Devil. I don’t know how to stop it._

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t say anything. But he feels the Devil rise in the tightness of his knuckles as Karen weeps and Foggy holds her, Elena Cardenas’s body laid out before them.

And the world fades away--

 

* * *

 

“Oh _god_...”

This is the worst yet. Searing throbbing pains across his chest and back mean gashes and stitches, with another under a bandage on his side. Shallower cuts and bone bruises are scattered here and there. There’s a swollen heaviness in his jaw which means his face has taken a beating. It occurs to Matt that he should be worried over the fact that he’s been injured and patched up so many times he’s able to identify his wounds without having to inspect them but it’s a dim, guttering thought in the face of his agony.

Matt thinks he’s on his couch but he can’t be sure. He gropes along the back of the piece of furniture he’s laid out on to haul himself up, then startles with a painful groan when a voice says, “Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Foggy. Thank god. Matt nearly sobs in relief. Foggy’s here, he knows what’s going on, he can finally explain to Matt-- “Or maybe I would,” Foggy continues and something’s wrong, he sounds angry with Matt, why would he be angry with Matt? “The hell do I know about Matt Murdock?”

Matt licks dry lips, whispers, “Foggy? Did you...?”

Foggy moves around the end of the couch from the direction of the kitchen. “What, stitch you up?” He snorts, sits down on one of the chairs across from the couch. “No, that was your nurse friend.”

“My -- what?”

Disdain and disbelief filter through Foggy’s voice. “Claire. You know, Claire? The one you had listed on a burner phone?”

The world is swallowing him up like it used to before Stick, except not through his senses but in his mind. It’s as if he’s wandered into a play of his life, only he doesn’t recognize any of the characters, doesn’t know his lines. Disorientation crashes around him like water, drags him down in a riptide. A burner phone? “Who’s -- who’s Claire?”

“You know perfectly well who Claire is!” Foggy shouts, shooting to his feet. “You’re the one who had me call her, you fuckhead!”

“I-I don’t--”

“And that was after you nearly put my lights out for trying to get you to the hospital!”

“I’m sorry,” Matt whispers. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember.” He doesn’t, it’s all a blank, it always is from the minute he puts his head down to sleep to when he wakes up. And he slept all night, _he slept all night_.

(No he didn’t.)

(But that thought is kept from his mind too.)

Foggy is standing over him now. Looming. Matt can’t help but shrink into the cushions, afraid and unsure. “Just tell me one thing,” he demands. “Are you even really blind?”

The question is ridiculous. So much so that Matt spends a minute gaping, unable to process those words coming out of Foggy’s mouth. “H-how can you even ask that?”

“Because you sure as hell didn’t act like you were blind when you took out those cops!”

“Took out _what_ cops? Foggy--”

“No, Matt.” He’s so angry. So angry. “No more lies or we’re done. Are you or are you not blind?”

Matt stammers in incomprehension. Foggy’s not having any of it, snarling, “ _Answer the damn question_ or I walk out that door and you’ll never see me again.”

He swallows, hearing the truth in those words, the implacable inevitability. “I’m blind,” he says, unsteadily. “Since the accident. Th-the last thing I remember seeing is my dad’s face. I swear it.”

There is a fraught pause, and then he hears Foggy draw in a deep breath. “Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable.” He steps away from the couch, voice shaking with tension and anger. “Do you just not respect me or something? I _found you on the floor_ half-dead and dressed like the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and you’re still lying to my face.”

Foggy -- what? Matt stares sightlessly at him. Then pushes that aside for the moment because Foggy _doesn’t believe him_. It’s a dagger to his chest, more painful than any physical injury. Matt scrabbles for a handhold to pull himself to his feet, desperate to chase Foggy down if he is about to make good on his threat and leave. He needs Foggy here, he needs him to understand--

Understand what?

“I’m not lying,” he says hoarsely, words clipped short with pain of all kinds. “I don’t know why you don’t believe me, but I swear on my dad’s grave that I am not lying to you about being blind.”

A hard pause, as Foggy considers this. “Fine,” he finally says. “Fine. Then explain the rest of it. The outfit, the mask. The injuries.”

“I’m not--” Matt starts, then stops, not knowing how to finish the sentence. He is scrambling for a foothold, the cliff is crumbling under him and he doesn’t know which way is up. He wants to accuse _Foggy_ of lying, of making this all up, he wants to deny everything as impossible, crazy, but the physical evidence of his body won’t allow him. Which leaves... what?

That Foggy is not lying.

That somehow, Matt really is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

(The sandcastles of his mind are crumbling, washed away by the tide and the merciless light of day.)

“You’re not what?” Foggy is pacing now, steps hard and quick. “You’re not the Devil?” He snatches up something from the floor and throws it at Matt. It hits him in the chest and he fumbles to catch it: a piece of knotted cloth, tacky with what smells like blood. No eyeholes that he can feel. A mask for a sightless Devil. “I thought you were going to _die_ , Matt. You lost so much fucking blood that Claire asked me if I was a universal donor just in case. And you were dressed up all in black with that stupid mask over your head!”

“I’m not -- I can’t--” Floundering, drowning in a room full of cool clean air as Foggy’s words pound away at him. “I don’t know, Foggy, I don’t remember. I don’t remember--”

“Right. You don’t _remember_.” Foggy spits the excuse back at him. “Fine. If you’re not the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, then how do you explain any of this? Did another person dress you up and beat the hell out of you and return you to your own apartment for shits and giggles?” He snorts bitterly. “Come off it, Matt. Occam’s Razor is about to slit your throat.”

Matt whimpers. “I don’t know. I can’t remember anything since going to the morgue.”

“That was yesterday afternoon!”

Oh God. He swallows. “I used to -- to lose time, when I was a kid. It hasn’t happened in years, but recently -- and never this bad, I -- I--”

He stutters to a stop. There’s another long silence, before Foggy straightens and declares, bitter and hard, “That’s it.” He turns for the door and Matt rises from the couch in a panic, collapses gasping in pain.

“Foggy, Foggy, no--”

The desperation in his voice must get to him because Foggy whirls around again, hisses, “Fuck you, you fucking son of a bitch.” He sounds insulted on top of angry. “I don’t have to stand here and take it while you lie to me about not having a whole other life, Murdock--”

And then there is a sudden, horrified silence.

“Foggy...?” Matt ventures after a moment, unsure. Foggy’s breathing hard, he can hear it from where he lies. He sounds like he’s going to pass out. Matt reaches out to him, alarmed. “Foggy?”

“Oh my god.” Foggy staggers back and lands heavily in a chair. “Oh my god. No. It -- you can’t be -- oh my god.”

“Foggy, what is it?”

He hears Foggy swallow. Swallow again. Whatever he’s realized, it’s bad -- worse than everything that has preceded it, and fear grips Matt. Foggy’s words sound as if they’ve been dragged out of him with a longshoreman’s hook: “Before you passed out last night, you said something.”

One more revelation and Matt thinks his skull will cave in, but he whispers, “What?” anyway, even though suddenly he can’t breathe.

“You said...” Foggy’s voice is odd and he swallows once more. Matt can’t -- his head hurts -- no, no, _no_ \--

“You said: ‘don’t tell him’.”


End file.
